When Normal Is Behind Us
by McKay
Summary: Being normal is more important than most of us realize.


Title: When Normal Is Behind Us  
  
Author: McKay  
  
Rating: PG, just to be on the safe side. There is a reference to homosexual activity and a reference to drug abuse and death as a result. Maybe that makes it PG-13 in this day and age, where nothing is considered G-rated anymore.  
  
Genre: Gen  
  
Summary: Being normal is more important than most of us realize. Liz POV, but if you didn't figure that out, I suck worse than I thought.  
  
Spoilers: Miscellaneous throughout the first two seasons. Really, you should know all this stuff. And one from the books, but it's backstory. In fact, I think I should clarify that Rosa was Liz's sister who died of a drug overdose. This happened prior to the events that took place in the books and is referenced a few times in the first book, possibly others; it's been ages since I've looked at those. It was never mentioned on the show, except for one scene in episode 1.12 (_Into the Woods_) that could possibly have been a reference to this.  
  
Disclaimer: If the show were mine, it wouldn't have sucked so hard. Jason Katims, Melinda Metz, the actors, writers, et al own the characters and situations. I'm just climbing into their heads for a minute.  
  
Author's notes: I got bored and wrote this in an hour. It's not good, it's unbeta-ed, and I don't like it enough to put more effort into it. I did reread and revise it, but my computer decided to restart itself before I could save the final revision. So why am I posting it? Eh, I dunno. I don't think it sucks too hard. Oh, and yes, the title is a mockery of the title of one of the lamer season one eps. Apologies if you were actually moved by _Leaving Normal_. I mean, it wasn't all bad...LizMaria HoYay! Author's notes mark II : I tweaked a few words that had gotten lost in the Great Crash. Basically nothing major, but a couple of sentences that didn't flow right for me.  
  
Feedback: R&R here. Don't make me beg, people, feed the beast! If you have suggestions, I'd like to hear them. I'm not opposed to making this fic better; I'm just too apathetic to do it on my own initiative. Flames will be posted all around the Internet with your name attached so that people can laugh at you. Then I will send out my chocobo to hunt you down maim you. Kiwano _likes_ the feel of human flesh between his talons, don't you, boy? And we both despise flamers.

When did your life disconnect with reality?  
  
Seriously, this can't be it.  
  
Your life. Or reality.  
  
You wonder what you're actually living.  
  
You think about all those people you served who assumed you'd have an interest in their conspiracy theories, notions of myriad dimensions, the aliens hidden in plain sight by...who? The Government, of course, but it never got more specific than that, and what did that ever mean, anyway?  
  
Well, whatever it meant, they were more or less right about the last one.  
  
Maybe they're onto something with this dimension thing, too.  
  
In the world you always assumed you lived in, stuff like this doesn't happen.  
  
In that world, you would have died years ago. Your parents would have been childless, like they'd always feared. They would have separated again. It wouldn't have been happy, but it would have been Normal.  
  
When Rosa died, Dad left, then Mom left, and you were left. Then they came back and you were a family again. And you had a few years of pretending that everything was fine.  
  
Then you died.  
  
Your parents never knew you died.  
  
That seems so bizarre to see in writing, as you look back over the journals - by now there have been many. You died, and your parents never had a clue.  
  
They didn't know a lot of things. And they all seem so impossible. Impossible for the world you're supposed to live in. That you supposedly live in.  
  
Silver handprints. Altered DNA. The FBI. Switched blood samples. Spontaneous human combustion. A shape-shifting son of a bitch. His 'daughter.' Pods. Doppelgangers. Hybrids. Skins. Premonitions. Dreamwalking. Pyrokineses. Curing cancer. Resurrection in many forms.  
  
If you believed in the concepts of Heaven and Hell, you know where you would be going.  
  
And the smaller, inconsequential things that are just as impossible, little moments with nail polish, CDs, even if they weren't menacing, they're still not right. You could never forget, it was always in the back of your mind, that they could have killed you easily. And let you die.  
  
It goes on. There are so many things that add up to something you still aren't able to comprehend, you probably never will be.  
  
You could take losing your sister, your grandmother and your oldest friend. You could take your parents' separation. You could take the ensuing catatonia and apathy peppered with frantic random searches of your room, bags, pockets. You could take the love triangles and love quadrangles and the teenaged lust mistaken for love. The homosexual tendencies (you loved Max, you would put up with anything as long as he was happy, and he looked the other way so many times for you.) The breakups, the fights, the unbearable frustration of keeping secrets. That's all part of Normal. You could've handled that.  
  
But this is your life, or something resembling it. This is not Normal.  
  
You could sell it as a sci-fi novel, or a series. A movie script. There's a good market for that stuff these days.  
  
Cold comfort.  
  
Maybe it was when Rosa died. Maybe it was when you died. But somewhere along the way...something shifted.  
  
What reality do you exist in?  
  
Not the one you're supposed to. 


End file.
